Mostly plays fine but has no sauce whatsoever in the audiovisual department. Musha Aleste precedes this by two years and hits all the same notes with far more grace and confidence than Imperium could ever dream of. Give that game a go instead, it's hard not to compare the two with how it blows this one out of the water.

I was wondering why this didn't feel the tiniest bit like Vic Tokai's shmups on Genesis and then learned it was actually developed by Jorudan instead, tragically also responsible for Xardion and Musya (not to be confused with Musha). All three of these were also released in the same year for the same console. Maybe that's why they're all super weak and hardly feel like final products, but who can say for sure.

The greatest skill an artist can have is learning how to steal. Rip off every idea you conceivably like. It's perfectly ok and encouraged! The best media is always a product of doing something already done in a different way.

But you gotta be classy about stealing - y'know, don't punch above your own weight. Don't go ripping off a classic if you can't take a unique spin or equally-ambitious shot at it.

Imperium is just a blatant ripoff of MUSHA with like, literally nothing good to say about it. It's 5 times longer than it has any right to be and doesn't have a single good enemy or boss encounter. Backgrounds are dull and every character sprite is microscopic. More than anything else, the few ways it rips of MUSHA's aesthetic don't even fit into the rest of the game's bootleg-ass artstyle.

Only positive takeaway is the EXP-based weapons system. It reminds me of Thunder Force if your shot types lost a power level on death instead of outright losing them. That said, most of them felt underpowered or obnoxious to use.

This isn't a more egregious or mind-numbing play as something like BioMetal or D-Force, but it just has nothing going for it. Your time is better spent literally anywhere else.